Majority and Minority Ethnic Voting in New Democracies
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Identity and Agency: Majority and Minority Ethnic Voting in New Democracies Benjamin P. McClelland Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy under the Executive Committee of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2020 © 2020 Benjamin P. McClelland All Rights Reserved Abstract Identity and Agency: Majority and Minority Ethnic Voting in New Democracies Benjamin P. McClelland This dissertation examines how ethnic identities are politicized through elections in new democracies. Using the cases of post-communist Latvia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, I compare the electoral success of campaigns which appeal to voters on the basis of ethnicity to those do not. I argue that ethnic parties are most likely in groups for whom two conditions are met. First, ethnicity must meaningfully differentiate ethnic insiders from outsiders, in such a way that voters will believe policy benefits will likely result from political representation for the group. Second, electoral institutions must ensure that the political mobilization of the group will result in electoral victory. These two conditions create fundamentally different incentives for ethnic majority groups and ethnic minority groups simply because of differences in group size. In most democracies with a large minority population, ethnic voting will be more likely among the majority group than the minority group, unless institutions encourage minority group voting by lowering barriers to entry. The results demonstrate the qualitatively different ways groups use ethnic identities as a resource to achieve political objectives, with important implications for minority group representation, political participation, and democratic governance in diverse societies. Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Why Study Ethnic Voting? . .4 1.2 A Theory of Ethnicity as a Political Asset . .6 1.2.1 Ethnicity as Informational . .7 1.2.2 Ethnic Identity as a Political Resource . .9 1.2.3 Majority and Minority Group Dynamics . 12 1.3 Contribution to Existing Research . 15 1.4 Plan of this Dissertation . 20 2 A Theory of Group Size and Ethnic Voting 22 2.1 Definitions . 23 2.1.1 Identity . 23 2.1.2 Ethnicity . 26 2.2 Linking Ethnicity and Voting . 29 2.2.1 Ethnicity and the Challenges of Elections . 29 2.2.2 The Benefits of Ethnic Representation . 34 2.2.3 Ethnicity as Coordination Device . 39 2.3 Institutions and Group Status . 42 2.4 Visualizing the Theory . 45 2.4.1 Ethnic Voting Decisions in a Very Small Polity . 46 2.4.2 Ethnic Voting in Reality: Albanians and the Albanian Diaspora . 50 2.5 Conclusion . 55 3 Research Design 57 3.1 Challenges and Approaches to Empirical Verification . 58 3.2 Features of this Design . 66 3.2.1 Data Sources . 70 3.2.2 Mixed Methods . 76 4 Ethnic Politics in Bosnia and Herzegovina 78 4.1 Historical Background . 79 4.2 The Wartime Origins of Bosnian Democratic Institutions . 86 4.3 The Evolution of Bosnian Political Actors under the New System . 90 4.4 The Political Use of Ethnicity in Bosnian Elections . 93 4.4.1 Party Names . 94 4.4.2 Party Logos . 98 4.4.3 Campaign Rhetoric . 102 4.5 Classifying Bosnian Political Parties . 113 i 4.5.1 A Three-Part Typology . 113 4.5.2 Can a Bosnian candidate really be “non-ethnic?” . 115 4.6 Conclusion . 119 5 Ethnic Voting in Bosnia and Herzegovina 121 5.1 Split-Ticket Voting and Ethnicity . 122 5.2 Data Collection and Sources . 127 5.2.1 Coding Parties . 128 5.2.2 Voting Data . 130 5.3 Analysis . 132 5.3.1 Descriptive statistics . 132 5.3.2 Local majority/minority status as independent variable . 135 5.3.3 State level demographic status as independent variable . 139 5.4 The Results in a Single City: the Case of Odžak . 143 5.5 Variation over Time . 145 5.6 Conclusion . 150 5.7 Appendix: Robustness to Alternate Coding: Voter Perceptions over Candidate Declarations . 151 6 Ethnic Politics in Latvia 154 6.1 Historical Background . 155 6.2 From Soviet Republic to European Democracy . 161 6.3 The Political Use of Ethnicity in Latvian Elections . 171 6.3.1 Party Names . 173 6.3.2 Campaign rhetoric . 178 6.3.3 A Note on Party Logos . 190 6.4 Classifying Latvian Political Parties . 194 6.4.1 A Three-Part Typology . 194 6.4.2 Can a Latvian Party Really be “non-ethnic?” . 195 6.5 Conclusion . 198 7 Latvian Elections over Time 200 7.1 Over-Time Variation in Latvia . 201 7.2 The Data Set . 206 7.3 The General Trajectory of Latvian Party Consolidation . 210 7.3.1 Party Vote Share over Time . 210 7.3.2 Candidate-Level Analysis . 213 7.4 Ethnic Position Change in Practice . 222 7.5 Conclusion . 228 8 Conclusion 230 8.1 Implications for Future Studies . 233 8.2 The Fate of Diverse Democracies . 240 References 249 ii List of Figures 2.1 Viable Yellow Party; Non-Viable Blue Party . 47 2.2 Two Electoral Districts Increases Viability for Blue Party . 47 2.3 Greater Diversity Increases Benefits from Yellow Party . 47 4.1 Bosnian Effective Number of Parties 1996-2014 . 91 4.2 Bosnian Ethnic Party Logos . 99 4.3 Bosnian Non-Ethnic Party Logos . 100 4.4 Bosnian Campaign Advertisements . 106 5.1 Ethnic Voting in Bosnia at Cantonal and State Levels . 133 5.2 Ethnic Voting in Bosnia by Group Type . 134 5.3 Ethnic Voting Scatterplot . 135 5.4 Comparison by Group . 140 5.5 Ethnic Vote Share Precinct Distribution . 141 5.6 Bosnian SNSD Logo, adopted 1996 . 145 5.7 Bosnian SNSD Homepage, February 2017 . 147 5.8 Campaign Posters for Bosnian SBB . 148 5.9 Logos for Bosnian BPS . 149 6.1 Naturalizations in Latvia: 1995-2018 . 171 6.2 Latvian Mainstream Party Logos . 190 6.3 Latvian State Symbols: Established 1923 & 1921 . 192 6.4 Ethnic Latvian & Far Right Parties . 193 7.1 Vote Share by Electoral Appeals in Latvia: 1995-2014 . 211 7.2 Probability of Election in Latvia by Appeal Type over Time . 216 7.3 Likelihood of Candidate Changing Ethnic Appeal in Latvia 1998-2014 . 218 7.4 Count of Candidates who Changed Ethnic Identification between Elections in Latvia 1998-2014 . 220 7.5 New Candidate Entry in Latvia by Appeal Type 1998-2014 . 221 iii List of Tables 2.1 Two Components of Ethnic Voting . 45 4.1 Bosnian Party Typology . 115 5.1 Institutional and Demographic Differences between Cantonal Assemblies and House of Representatives . 124 5.2 Hypotheses . 127 5.3 Split-Ticket Voting Regression Results . 137 5.4 Disaggregated Dependent Variable . 139 5.5 Voting Returns from Odžak 2010* . 143 5.6 Robustness to Alternative Codings . 152 6.1 Latvian Party Typology . 195 7.1 Hypotheses . 206 iv 1 Introduction On my first ever visit to the former Yugoslavia, I found myself at a bar in Sarajevo talking to a fellow patron. He was roughly my age, but we had clearly lived very different lives. He was still in primary school when the Bosnian War had begun, and he had spent a substantial chunk of his childhood in a war zone. The experience had filled him with contempt and disgust that had not abated in the years following the war. He said that the world thought there were three types of people in Bosnia, but that was wrong. Yes, there were Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs, but there was also a fourth type: “normal people.” His dream, he said, was to send all the Bosniaks to Turkey, and the Croats to Croatia, and all the Serbs to Serbia, and then Bosnia could be a great country, full of “normal” people. Those people, he thought, would probably have a pretty good time with everyone else gone. My thought at the time was that this person must be extremely atypical. People who hang out in bars in the capital to practice their English with foreigners are hardly a representative sample of Bosnians. Ethnic divisions are so deeply entrenched in virtually all aspects of Bosnian society that to imply that the overwhelming.